Saturday, January 29, 2011

Movie Review: The Rite

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Will the start of the year doldrums please hurry up and get over! I posted out via Twitter and Facebook whether I should see The Mechanic or The Rite. The response was to go see The Rite and Anthony Hopkins came up as a reason. OK, that's a good reason, he's a wonderful actor. It also had the earlier of the two show times which is always a plus in my book.


So movie begins and with the credits, any time there was a letter "T" they turned it into a cross except when the word had two. When that happened, only one "T" turned into a cross. So we get the idea that the movie is going to have something to do with religion. For the first quarter of the movie we don't even see Anthony Hopkins. We're given the back story of Michael Kovak (Colin O'Donoghue) a young man who has retreated to the seminary to get away from his dad and the family mortuary business.

Michael before final vows to become a priest is sent to Rome to learn about exorcism. The Pope wants to make sure that there are plenty of exorcists to go around. One of the justifications for sending him? Because of the family business he won't be squeamish like other candidates would be. The problem? He's not sure of his faith. So to help with his belief level Michael is sent by Father Xavier (Ciarán Hinds) who is heading up the teaching program to visit Father Lucas Trevant there in Rome.

So we finally get to see Sir Anthony Hopkins as Father Trevant. He's living in a run down villa surrounded by cats. He's not the crazy old cat man, but one has to wonder as you watch him. So the man of faith and the man of questionable faith meet. When a mother and her pregnant teenage daughter visit Father Trevant, Michael wonders if instead of being possessed she just needs a good psychologist. Michael was asked if he was expecting pea soup and the girls head to start spinning around as proof of possession, an obvious reference to the classic movie, The Exorcist.

Michael isn't sure what to make of everything. In class he meets Angelia (Alice Braga), a reporter who is covering the class. She's trying to make sense of what happened in her own family with her brother. Was it sickness or possession? The two seem to be in the same river at the same time paddling in the same direction just in different boats.

Eventually the good father himself gets possessed and it's up to Michael with Angelia's help to save Father Trevant. But does Michael believe? If you don't believe in the devil and his evil, how can you believe in God and his good? But if the devil exists that would mean that God is real too. When confronted will faith and belief step forward or will it be easier to turn and walk away?

As with exorcism movies you'd expect scenes contain disturbing thematic material, violence, frightening images, and language including sexual references which earned the movie a PG-13 rating for the 112 minute running time. There was only one scene that made me jump in my seat. The rest of the movie was blase. As I told one person: been there, seen that, bought the t-shirt. So please have faith in me when I tell you to keep the money in your pocket for this one.


The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Movie Review: No Strings Attached

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Did you ever see the cartoon strip of Snoopy and how he feels on the days of the week? He's all happy on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. On Monday he feels down and gets worse on Tuesday and then on Wednesday there is a storm cloud over head, the thunder and lighting are going while it rains on the dog laying there under the cloud getting soaked. The caption says "Please let me die." That's how I sort of feel this month with the selection of movies released this January. Only two releases this week and I was hoping this one would make me laugh with No Strings Attached!


It stars Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher as directed by Ivan Reitman. You know, the guy who gave us Meatballs and the Ghostbusters classic comedies. Portman and Kutcher play Emma and Adam. A boy and a girl who met 15 years previous at summer camp and end up crossing paths a few times in the years after. It's now the present day and they run into each other in Los Angeles. He lives there already and she just moved out there for a medical residency. There's some chemistry between the two or at least that's what they want you to believe.

He wants her but she's not having any of it until they come to a compromise. They can have all the intimate relations they want. Oh, I used the word intimate. That's wrong. For some reasoning that we weren't privy to during the course of the 110 minutes of the movie, she's blocked out men from having any sort of meaningful relationship with her. She seems to be damaged goods but we're left scratching our heads as to why. She doesn't want the intimacy. Emma just wants the physical portion and nothing else. Both she and Adam can do what they want with others if they would like.

This works for a while. The obligatory montage with the different times, places and circumstances where the two meet just to show us the audience that they like as Austin Powers would say, "have a randy shag, oh yeah baby!" OK, we get it, they get it on quite frequently. In one scene the audience gets to see Ashton's butt, or was it a stand in. Don't know. Portman shows us what is the equivalent of a two piece bikini. As a result, the movie was rated R for sexual content, language and some drug material.

For his hang up, it was trying to make it in Hollywood. He's a production assistant on a what looks like it might be a knock off on the Disney Channel 's High School Musical. His father Alvin (Kevin Kline) is a former star for a sitcom. If this movie ever gets the Rocky Horror Picture Show treatment, make sure you bring lots of toilet paper with you because Alvin's moniker line is "Great Scott!" and it gets repeated quite a bit. Everyone assumes that Adam is hanging off of his dad's coat tails when in actuality he's truly trying to make it on his own without his father's help.

She's stone cold and keeps pushing him away. He's the good boy who really does want a relationship. A little different twist than most rom-coms. Does the boy get the girl? By the end of the movie I really couldn't have cared. They poked fun at doctors, camera phones, Hollywood and relationships. They all fell flat. Maybe if there were some strings attached they could have pulled together a better movie.




The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Movie Review: The Green Hornet

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To get to today's movie was an event in itself. My regular Regal theater wasn't showing The Green Hornet in 2D, only the Real 3D and IMAX 3D. The previews didn't get me interested enough to pay the upcharge (47% price increase on a matinee show), so I ventured closer to home and went to Consolidated Theaters. BUT they start their shows later in the day and with a couple of other tasks and time management screw ups, I went to the second show that was at 3:55pm. Same ticket price paid but no loyalty program with Consolidated. The one plus was a special station where you text a code to Sprint. The resulting return message when shown to a special scanner allowed you to receive a discount coupon on a concession stand item. I chose to upgrade from a medium to large drink with my coupon saving me $0.50.


The movie itself was for the most part a yawner. It was co-written by, executive produced by and starred everyone's favorite hairy and curly haired fat stoner party guy Seth Rogen. Well, I'll give him credit, he did trim down to play Britt Reid who became the Green Hornet. Mr Party Boy who lost his mother at a young age and had a dad James Reid (Tom Wilkinson) who was more concerned about the 750 people working at the family newspaper, the Daily Sentinel, than worry about the upbringing of his son decides to fight crime after his dad passed away from an allergic reaction to a bee sting. We've seen Rogen play this sort of part before in other movies like Knocked Up, Observe and Report and Pineapple Express. Speaking of Pineapple Express, his friend and PE alum James Franco made an uncredited cameo in the movie where the big baddie of the movie, Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz) is introduced and his bad guy thought process laid out.

Having Waltz play this part was such a waste of talent. This is the man who won the BAFTA and Oscar for his portrayal of Col. Hans Landa in 2009's Inglorious Basterds. The running joke that was set up about Chudnofsky's attire and then the lame-o tag line he planned on using once he decided to upgrade his outfit to turn himself into a super villain were cringe worthy moments in the movie. For him to deliver those lines and keep a straight face proves the guy can act!

Why they would pay a big salary for someone like Cameron Diaz to play the younger Reid's secretary is beyond me. For what she brought to the part they could have gotten a Senior Theater major from USC or UCLA to do the same thing. If they had done that, maybe they could have found the next IT girl kinda like what happened with Diaz in The Mask. Diaz was a pretty face with a name where just a pretty face would have done. There was no chemistry between her character Lenore Case and Reid or the newcomer to American made cinema via Taiwan, Jay Chou who played Reid's Executive Associate Kato by day and by night the Green Hornet's valet, Kato.

Chou's martial art skills were one of the saving graces of the movie. He moved quickly, skillfully and sharply dispatching the bad guys one by one while party boy for the most part cowered, at least in the beginning of the film. Like all hero movies, at some point Britt must develop a back bone. Most of the dialogue scenes were boring. The start of the 118 minute movie was OK, the middle for the most part dragged on. When The Green Hornet and Kato started signing along to Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise while riding in a modified 1965 Chrysler Imperial, The Black Beauty, my eyes rolled back in my head. What kept my overall interest were the action scenes. That would include the ending sequence.

The action scenes were over the top. Guns going off in every direction possible. Lots of rockets and explosions and yet the bodies weren't hitting the floor just from the sheer volume of lead and shrapnel flying through the air. When someone was dispatched, they weren't afraid to show it. Several people were crushed. Blood didn't spatter all over the screen, but you could see the body or what contained the body going down. The movie was rated PG-13 for sequences of violent action, language, sensuality and drug content. But what they considered drug content was they showed a meth lab and for sensuality, a man and a women were in the same bed because saying that you'd like to bang someone doesn't count as sensual. It was really the action that earned the movie the rating more than anything else.

For all the trouble that I went through to see the 2D version, it wasn't worth it. From what I could tell where they would have used the 3D were really manufactured moments like when Kato got excited forcing his heart to pump and change his perception of the world around him. Nah, not buying it. The closing credits were designed to take advantage of people wearing the special glasses while they got to hear Jay Chou crooning to the song Nunchucks which he co-wrote. Trying to see the 3D version could have been easier, but still wouldn't have been worth it. With everything that Rogen has gone through to get this movie to the big screen, it's obvious that it was a labor of love for him. Maybe he could show some love to future audiences by just releasing only the action scenes when the DVD/Blu-ray comes out and by not producing a sequel.





The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Movie Review: Country Strong

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The first full weekend of 2011! At least we had two selections available unlike last weekend! Choices: Country Strong or Season of the Witch. It was a tough decision. Nick Cage and Ron Perlman looked kinda hokey in their preview. I'm not a super huge fan of country music either. So the deciding criteria this week was the earlier film and one that would earn me extra movie points which meant the country music was awarded my attendance!


Gwyneth Paltrow has been showing her musical chops over the past few months with her appearance at the Country Music Awards show and her role on Glee. This allowed her to play six time Grammy Award winning singer Kelly Canter. Like a lot of music superstars (and many not so super) she's in rehab after having an alcoholic meltdown in Dallas. James her husband/manager (Tim McGraw) decides to pull her out a month early. You watch the two look and talk to each other and you wonder why he pulled her out. While laying in bed next to each other she says to him "I got a Brazilian" and his response is "I just took an Ambien, see you in eight hours". Not the normal take on "not tonight honey, I have a headache." So why did he pull her out: for him, for her, for the music or for the money?

Befriending her at the rehab center was Beau, a local country singer/song writer who was an employee there. The formerly clean shaven Tron: Legacy star Garrett Hedlund is transformed into the scruffy looking orderly by day, local country singer heartthrob at night. Kelly wants Beau to come on her comeback tour as an opening act. James on the other hand wants the former Miss Dallas beauty queen Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester) to be the opening act. So a compromise is hit and they both go on the three city tour with the final stop being Dallas itself. What better location to pick yourself up and dust yourself off other than the scene where you fell off the bucking bronco in the first place!

This is where the story gets messy. There are a number of cliches that follow. Both up and coming stars Beau and Chiles are making tough decisions about their future. The superstar who wants to remain on top but may be washed up but hoping for a come back. Wow, that last one sounds like Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, doesn't it? People around the star enabling them and their bad habits. Sleeping around in order to get what you want. These earned the film a PG-13 rating for thematic elements involving alcohol abuse and some sexual content. Was Beau there to get ahead in music, to save the old star or get the new one was murky at best. Same sort of questions with Chiles. Was her intention to get James, a career or Beau? There are too many more to mention. As I said it was messy.

The singing in the movie seemed good. Apparently Hedlund grew up around country music and was excited to play the part for the movie. McGraw who played Hedlund's father in 2004's Friday Night Lights let Hedlund stay on his ranch near Nashville in order to get Hedlund ready for the role. Meester also did a respectable job. After the big appearances last year, we know Paltrow has pipes that can do the country twang required of the role. What I thought was funny is that the one true country star among them, McGraw, didn't sing. I take that back, he did, but in the end credits, not as part of the film.

There was one major surprise in the film that I didn't totally see coming but for the most part, I sat in my seat for the 112 minutes, not really bored, but not excited about what was in front of me. Towards the end when Paltrow was giving a medley I wondered how many more songs I would have to wait through for the drama to start up again. Maybe if I was a big country fan my response would be different for the music and the movie.




The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.